In the process of automatically milking animals, the foremilk obtained with the teat cups, i.e. the squirts of milk first drawn from the animal's teat into the teat cup, are generally mixed with milk left in the animal's teat from the previous milking and this old milk is jointly stored with fresh milk in a milk tank. It is generally known that the foremilk of some animals can have a high germ count. Mixing the foremilk with the fresh milk is thus undesirable because it results eventually in milk of a lower quality.